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The Two Regiments: the Continental Setting of William Tyndale’s Political Thought*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

W.D.J. Cargill Thompson
W.D.J. Cargill Thompson*
Affiliation:
University of London King’s College
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Extract

Strype tells the story of how Henry VIII is said to have remarked, on being given a copy of Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man by Anne Boleyn, ‘For this book is for me, and all kings to read.’ Whether or not the story is true—and it is perhaps safest to regard it as apocryphal—it has generally been held to be ben trovato in the sense that Tyndale’s teaching on authority and obedience was such as would have had an obvious appeal to Henry VIII, and it has frequently been assumed that Tyndale’s doctrine anticipated the legislation of the reformation parliament. But what precisely was Tyndale’s political teaching and where does he stand in the history of sixteenth-century political thought? It is a curious fact that although Tyndale’s importance as the first English protestam political thinker of the sixteenth century has been widely recognised, there has been little detailed investigation of his political thought and no attempt to set it in the context of contemporary continental protestam thinking. By and large, Tyndale has been accepted simply as an extreme exponent of Luther’s teaching on non-resistance and the divine right of authority, or as a precursor of the royal supremacy, without any effort being made to analyse the precise character of his views.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 2: Reform and Reformation: England and the Continent c1500-c1750 , 1979 , pp. 17 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1979 

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Footnotes

*

At his sudden death Professor Cargill Thompson left several drafts of this article on which he had clearly been working for a considerable time. This is a slightly emended and extended version of the most complete draft, with a minimum of footnotes added. (Very full scholarly documentation relating both to Luther’s and Tyndale’s political thought can be found in the author’s doctoral thesis on which a considerable part of this paper is based, [W. D. J.] Cargill Thompson, ‘The Two Regiments: [a study of the development of the theory of the relations of Church and State during the Reformation, with particular reference to England’], Cambridge Ph D 1960, especially pp 50-84, 166-88.) I am most grateful to Dr W. J. Sheils, Dr E. Duffy and Miss K. M. Whiteley for their help in transcription and scholarly comments. (Claire Cross)

References

1 Strype, , Memorials, I, p 172Google Scholar.

2 [The Obedience of a Christian Man], Doctrinal Treatises[…by William Tyndale, ed H. Walter], PS (1848) p 178.

3 Allen, J. W., A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London 1928) pp 128–9Google Scholar.

4 R. W., and Carlyle, A. J., History of Medieval Political Theory in the West, 6 (London 1936) pp 287–92Google Scholar.

5 Williams, C. H., William Tyndale (London 1969) pp 138–9, 140Google Scholar.

6 Scarisbrick, J. J., Henry VIII (London 1968) p 247Google Scholar.

7 Morris, C., Political Thought in England; Tyndale to Hooker (Oxford 1953) pp 37–9Google Scholar.

8 Clebsch, [W. A.], [England’s Earliest Protestants 1520-1535] (New Haven/London 1964) pp 201–2Google Scholar.

9 [Exposition upon the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Chapters of Matthew], Expositions [… by Tyndale, William, ed Walter, H.], PS (1849) pp 60–8Google Scholar.

10 Trinterud, [L. J.], ‘A reappraisal [of William Tyndale’s debt to Martin Luther’], CH, 31 (1962) pp 24–45Google Scholar.

11 Clebsch pp 201-2.

12 [An] Answer to [Sir Thomas] Morel’s Dialogue, ed H. Walter], PS (1850) p 188.

13 Ibid p 212; and see Luther, M., Von Krieg wieder den Turcken (Frankfurt 1529)Google Scholar.

14 Expositions pp 60-8.

15 Doctrinal Treatises pp 525-6.

16 Expositions pp 60-8.

17 Doctrinal Treatises p 178.

18 Ibid pp 168-71.

19 Ibid pp 173-88.

20 Ibid p 178

21 Ibid p 202.

22 Ibid p 177.

23 Thompson, W.D.J. Cargill, ‘Luther and the right of resistance to the emperor’, SCH, 12 (1975) pp 159–202Google Scholar.

24 Doctrinal Treatises pp 173-88.

25 Ibid p 240.

26 Expositions pp 65-6, 68; the author had intended to expand this paragraph.

27 Clebsch pp 201-2.

28 Expositions p 67.

29 Doctrinal Treatises p 188-9.

30 Ibid p 188.

31 Answer to More p 265.

32 Thompson, W.D.J. Cargill, ‘Who wrote The Supper of the Lord?’, HTR, 53 (1960) pp 77–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Expositions pp 60-8.

34 Rupp, E. G., Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition (reissued Cambridge 1966) pp 50–1Google Scholar.

35 Joye, G., An Apology …, to satisfy, if it may be, W. Tindale, 1535, ed Arber, E., English Scholar’s Library, 13 (London 1882) p 42.Google Scholar

36 Expositions pp 61-3.

37 Luther first fully worked out the concept of the two regiments in Von Weltlicher Obrigkeit (1523), WA, 11, pp 251 et seq; there is a detailed exposition of Luther’s doctrine of the two regiments in Cargill Thompson, ‘The Two Regiments’, pp 50-84.

38 Expositions pp 60-8.

39 Ibid pp 60-8.

40 Trinterud, , ‘A reappraisal’, pp 24–45; Clebsch, pp 154–204Google Scholar.

41 Moller, J.G., ‘The beginnings of puritan covenant theology’, JEH, 14 (1963) pp 46–67Google Scholar.

42 Doctrinal Treatises pp 451-2; Expositions pp 60-8.

43 Expositions pp 60-8,136-7.

44 Ibid pp 60, 136-7.

45 Ibid p 136; Clebsch p 171.

46 Doctrinal Treatises pp liii-lvi.

47 Ibid pp 359 et seq.